[Xzylvador]

Yeah, the line can get a little blurry at times, I'll be the first to admit.
I guess the first and biggest different is intent; the difference between two mindset:
Minmax "I want to make the best Face" vs Optimized "I want to make an elf stripper who grew up as a poor SINless refugee in Tarislar but learned how to lie, manipulate, charm and secude her way out of the slums and now always gets her way"
Minmax "I want to throw the biggest fireball" vs Optimized "My Hermetic mage studies the way magic and the elements affect eachother and does shadowruns as an expert in offensive combat spells. He uses the money for the expensive magical equipment required and being able to test some of the more dangerous magical theories in practice is a nice bonus to him!"

During chargen I frequently find myself having slipped to the min-max side and have to tell myself to think of the character instead of thinking of this and that skill. And then I stop messing with the numbers, look at the charsheet as a whole and notice a hole here and a quirk there that just doesn't belong in an actual credible person and see if I can fix it.

Wow, 5 ninja's jumped past me!
This was an answer to:

An interesting distinction. Where is the line drawn though? When does an optimal build become min-maxed? Not asking you to give a concrete answer, don't want to derail, more just a rhetorical challenge for the two schools of thought.

which now seems a bit obsolete, with stonefur using the same words in a much shorter answer :p

@A4BG: You could be right, I didn't check a dictionary, I was just using the words how I see 'em used most often in the gaming circles I frequent.
Anyhow, in the post(s) I made, Min-Maxing is obviously meant to be interpreted differently than that and from the replies from the other posters it seems they understood my intentions.

[Crunch]

Nope, sorry. I don't know who told you that is "min-maxing" but they lied to you. That is creating wide, deep weakness in the character, which is anathema to "min-max". MINIMIZE WEAKNESS and maximize strength is what min-max is, so by virtue of putting such glaring flaws in, the character can not be considered "min-max".

I disagree. Dump statting an attribute rarely used in a characters primary role is a grand old tradition of min maxing.

[Noble Drake]

Oh you get it here too.

"Your character is suffering from the 'why is this character not an ork' flaw," is one that I was told once.
"Take a 1 Agility  and get a cyberarm with enhanced agility that'll give you 22 for firearms."


Any character I see that has a 1 attribute makes me want to sort of cry.

I hadn't seen that type of stuff yet, at least not when it seemed out of place to the advice request... but then, I have mostly only noticed advice requests that were basically "how do I kill jerks the best with [insert type of attack]?"

The closest I have seen to what I call "theory of mandatory char-op" is in the discussions of Initiative.

[Reaver]

Oh you get it here too.

"Your character is suffering from the 'why is this character not an ork' flaw," is one that I was told once.
"Take a 1 Agility  and get a cyberarm with enhanced agility that'll give you 22 for firearms."


Any character I see that has a 1 attribute makes me want to sort of cry.

I love these people at my table <evil grin>. It usually ends in tears, torn character sheets, and humiliation.

[Thrass]

My humble opinion about this:

I think min maxing begins, and starts to be a problem, if you minimize traits beyond the norm.
Maximizing some skills is no problem, or shouldn't be a problem.
When you minimize something like charisma to the point that an ugly ork 3 year old is twice as good as you at the least... then you have a problem...
You got a Roleplaying problem because you can't effectively roleplay that kind of uncharismatic and disgusting, either you hide all the time or people run away all the time or just ignore you with disgust or don't notice you at all (like you don't get a coffe at starbucks even if you pay for it because you can't make yourself heard).
Basically this is not portrayable in an rpg game (exception maybe nosferatu in vampire maybe which just basically hide all the time except to likewise creatures, where again nosferatu basically can't interact with humans)
(Note imho in Shadowrun this isn't possible to build characters like these... soemthing like negative charisma for example)

As long as you don't go for those minimized stats it is not minmaxing and falls into the category of optimizing.
What can happen is that people build characters they are not capable of playing, that's a tough job for the GM to enforce the Character to the player up to the point where the GM has to say:
No you shouldn't/can't play that character because basically it doesn't fit the group/campaign or you just can't handle the stuff you put into your character or maybe even I as a GM can't handle it.

This is a GM call based on the Character, the people involved and maybe other factors too but if you don't go for extremely absurd stats it is a roleplay challenge (and it is for everyone not only the one who did the character).
And therefore it is the GMs job to decide what the players and he himself can handle and manage to portray and it is his job to say no.

It is the players job to accept any "no" the GM throws at him for this reason.


Is a character with 1s in all physical stats optimized? maybe
Is he minmaxed? not necessarily... he get's his fair share of problems (can't ever default on anything physical etc.)
Should it just plainly forbidden? hell no!
I really want to play that (from birth on) quadripilegic technomancer some time and I think it's fluff wise stupid to give him anything more then 1 in physical stats...
I mean... he can move his head... that's about it why would he ever develope a strength agility or anything score beyond that of an infant? he never used his body.
Is he playable? really depends... he's los if he ever falls out of his wheelchair or whatever he is using... but as long as he remains inside his Horseman he can
do everything he needs to on the physical space. So it is maybe a challenge but not plainout foobar.

Is a Troll with 1 Charisma and incompetent playable? yes but it is quite a huuuuge challenge to play someone that has trouble ordering a milkshake at a fastfood service and has no firends whatsoever.
(Except maybe what he thinks is a friend and is actually a Bully that takes advantage of him the whole day because he lacks means to comprehend and stand up against him on the verbal front)
The first time the player actually says "no" in character you should maybe have him roll, (oh can't incompetent, no skill, attribute of 1, dicepool 0... Nope, you don't say no you think it in your head but are too shut in to mention your thoughts on the matter)

Really there are poeple out there who want and maybe even like to play such characters, but it's the job of the GM to make sure the character plays by his stats.

It would of course be nice of the GM to reason with the player (you realize you have build such a social shut in that you would in theory never approach another human being to ask for anything and therefore will only ever have contact with service robots in the game?)

And to that concept/story/numbers first thing:
I can build my story after the number crunching part and then retrace what would be logical steps that lead to the character and get to my character, I did that and build my character with my GM and got the Character I wanted.
The GM was happy because he had the feeling my story was there first and then came the numbers... I was happy because I could play the character I wanted to (which was built by stats)
It helps nothing to enforce story first.


P.S.
Minmaxing comes from computer gams iirc where you minimize stats you don't need to maximize stats you need it is not about minimizing weaknesses it is minimizing to be able to maximize and is an accepted prize...
minimizing weaknesses can of course be a part of maximizing (maximizing defense/survivability) but usually you drop like charisma to get better physical stats and high charisma is not a weakness.

[All4BigGuns]

Rating 0 Untrained
The general baseline of knowledge shared by society. This is not incompetence; it
is the standard level of untrained knowledge held by any Joe Average.

As one can plainly see, defaulting on a skill is what the "average" person would have. Truly "min-max" would make use of this in areas beyond their specialty, as it by rules and "fluff" would put the character's ability in other areas within the realm of a 'normal person'.

P.S.
Minmaxing comes from computer gams iirc where you minimize stats you don't need to maximize stats you need it is not about minimizing weaknesses it is minimizing to be able to maximize and is an accepted prize...
minimizing weaknesses can of course be a part of maximizing (maximizing defense/survivability) but usually you drop like charisma to get better physical stats and high charisma is not a weakness.

That's not 'min-max'. That's twisting the system in knots to be better at specialty. An actual 'min-maxer' would never take Uncouth because it creates too big of a weakness in the character. This is a common misconception.

[Noble Drake]

Nope, sorry. I don't know who told you that is "min-maxing" but they lied to you. That is creating wide, deep weakness in the character, which is anathema to "min-max". MINIMIZE WEAKNESS and maximize strength is what min-max is, so by virtue of putting such glaring flaws in, the character can not be considered "min-max".

I disagree. Dump statting an attribute rarely used in a characters primary role is a grand old tradition of min maxing.

That particular usage needs to be analyzed a bit further to see why it was called that:

When the term "dump stat" originated, the standard was to roll ability scores randomly. That would usually result in a low roll that needed to be put somewhere... and was usually "dumped" into whatever the character was already receiving a penalty to (like Charisma or a dwarf back then).

The reason was to minimize the weakness brought to the character from that low roll - the dwarf character didn't have a direct use for Charisma, so there was a lessened impact of placing the low roll there.

The term min/max applied because you were motivated by minimizing the impact of a low score that you could not simply choose not to have - not because you had specifically chosen to have your least relevant ability score as low as possible.

Min/max, as a term, does not apply to minimizing one ability score to maximize another - except in situations where that process minimizes an area of weakness that a character would experience if that choice were not made: a great example is D&D 4e. You could maximize your defense by choosing one of the attributes in each category (strength or constitution; dexterity or intelligence; wisdom or charisma) and leaving it at the minimum allowed value so that you could afford to raise the other higher for a greater tangible benefit.

In SR4, dropping a score to minimum is creating an unmitigated weakness - which is the opposite of min/maxing.

[Noble Drake]

Oh you get it here too.

"Your character is suffering from the 'why is this character not an ork' flaw," is one that I was told once.
"Take a 1 Agility  and get a cyberarm with enhanced agility that'll give you 22 for firearms."


Any character I see that has a 1 attribute makes me want to sort of cry.

I love these people at my table <evil grin>. It usually ends in tears, torn character sheets, and humiliation.

Really? At my table they seem to just get bored that I won't ramp up the game to the level where there is a difference between 22 dice to shoot someone 12 dice for the same - both tend to put the bad guy on the ground.

...then they get even more bored when stuff besides shooting people in the face comes up and they don't really have much to contribute.

I've had a lot of players request re-builds and tone their characters way, way down because of it - but never any tears or humiliation... and the only torn character sheet I've ever seen was when a guy had this character all built and ready and was very excited to play, but had missed the inherent limitation to a certain rule that made most of his character build illegal or irrelevant

[Crunch]

In SR4, dropping a score to minimum is creating an unmitigated weakness - which is the opposite of min/maxing.

Again I disagree. I pretty frequently see builds that center on making one stat or a group of stats irrelevant then setting them to as low a level as possible. A good example would be the "never leaves the coccoon" hacker with 1 in all physical atts or the Sniper with 1 Strength mentioned earlier.

[emsquared]

The line, IMO, is the intent.  Intent to be part of the story, rather than to try and be the story by breaking the game for every one else.  just my 2 pennies.

Here's the problem though with that line, within reason (barring the troll possession shaman tanks, etc.) the only time a build made within the rules is truly game breaking is because the GM isn't competent enough to do his job. If the GM tells his players he's running a low-power campaign and a player shows up with a min-maxed combat monster, that's a different problem (a bad-fit of a player).

[All4BigGuns]

In SR4, dropping a score to minimum is creating an unmitigated weakness - which is the opposite of min/maxing.

Again I disagree. I pretty frequently see builds that center on making one stat or a group of stats irrelevant then setting them to as low a level as possible. A good example would be the "never leaves the coccoon" hacker with 1 in all physical atts or the Sniper with 1 Strength mentioned earlier.

Just because you see it done doesn't change that it is the opposite of true min-max. In fact, actual min-max is rare to see in comparison to creating such drastic weakness in a character.

[Crunch]

Just because you see it done doesn't change that it is the opposite of true min-max. In fact, actual min-max is rare to see in comparison to creating such drastic weakness in a character.

I still disagree. In a limited resources environment, like a point or priority build system, finding a way to free up points for strengths by not spending them on stats you plan never to use is min maxing. Wheter its effective min maxing depends on the GM and the build, but saying that dump statting is never part of min maxing in a build value system seems bizarre.

[All4BigGuns]

Just because you see it done doesn't change that it is the opposite of true min-max. In fact, actual min-max is rare to see in comparison to creating such drastic weakness in a character.

I still disagree. In a limited resources environment, like a point or priority build system, finding a way to free up points for strengths by not spending them on stats you plan never to use is min maxing. Wheter its effective min maxing depends on the GM and the build, but saying that dump statting is never part of min maxing in a build value system seems bizarre.

A 'dump stat' to a true min-maxer is having the attribute at the average level for the system, whereas a 'dump stat' for someone 'gaming the system' is having the attribute at 1. There are, however, plenty of reasons to have a 1 in an attribute (mainly physical ones though). The hacker/technomancer that never goes out and just sits in VR all the time probably wouldn't have more than a 1 in any physical other than maybe Reaction. Mental attributes are a bit different, as it's generally harder to play a lower intelligence than the player has than it is to play a higher--as an example.

As stated though, a true min-maxer would never consider the negative qualities like Uncouth due to the inherent and dramatic weakness it creates.

Min-maxing and 'gaming the system' are two different things, and people are trying to lump them together. Square peg, round hole.

[Crunch]

Min-maxing and 'gaming the system' are two different things, and people are trying to lump them together. Square peg, round hole.

I'm not sure I accept your definition. Min Maxing and gaming the system are not identical, but a min maxer can game the system and can do so in the pursuit of min maxing.

[All4BigGuns]

Min-maxing and 'gaming the system' are two different things, and people are trying to lump them together. Square peg, round hole.

I'm not sure I accept your definition. Min Maxing and gaming the system are not identical, but a min maxer can game the system and can do so in the pursuit of min maxing.

They can, but that doesn't mean that it is always the case, which some people try to claim.